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Re: [LUG] migrating from M$ office

 

On Friday 03 August 2007 11:36, Michael Mortimore wrote:
> I have the opposite opinion to Henry. I think that Openoffice is a
> good alternative to msoffice on its own but I don't consider it useful
> for dealng with msoffice documents and msoffice users.

I consider OOo a much better way of dealing with Microsoft Office documents 
than Office itself! The latest Office version I believe saves - as one of its 
options - in .docx format, which is totally incompatible with all other 
formats as I understand it. Office 200x saved documents are generally 
incompatible with earlier versions of Office I know that from experience - I 
have had Windows users come to me who could not open docs they saved in their 
old version of Office when using the newer ones. OpenOffice.org WILL open 
earlier (and later) documents - though not I believe the .docx formats which 
Microsoft presumably introduced to "encourage" sales of their latest office 
program. 
 
>
> Since the conversion isn't perfect, I have to keep checking the docs
> in msoffice before I show them to anyone else (I'm happy to deal with
> content first and layout at the end but I seem to be in the minority
> on that point.). Eg. ooo and mso highlight text in different ways.
> When I give a doc with highlighted text to someone else they can't
> unhighlight it in the normal way. There are many more little things
> like that that add up to a large problem when several people are
> writing the one document and you're the only linux user in the
> village.
>

I agree - but who is at fault here? The user for saving in a proprietary 
format? Microsoft for failing to adhere to the official standards? 
OpenOffice.org for failing to adhere to the Microsoft standards?
To be fair, OOo does a pretty good job at working with Microsoft Office, 
despite having to presumably reverse engineer the Microsoft "standards". At 
least OOo stands a chance of opening and formatting an Office 200x document - 
the poor Office 9x user may find they are unable to open it!

I use OpenOffice.org on my systems exclusively. I have to deal with some 
things I am sent in Microsoft Office formats - particularly Excel and .doc 
which I have no problem with. Very complex things - with embedded pictures 
and other such things seem to be the ones which cause problems with 
formatting.  Basic plain .doc files - the sort of thing most users would 
create in the first place - work fine in OpenOffice.org.

Mark

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